These watercolours are on vellum or board, with precise detail, magnified and in vivid colours. The pictures first appeared in Durin’s 1980 Beetles and Other Insects, modelled on specimens in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The Galerie Martine Gossieaux is at 56 rue de university, Paris 75007.

Cicindella campestris Anisocelis flaviolineata

Cicada orni Zoniopoda omnicolor

Sternotomis bohemeni Blephanopsis mendica

There are between 1.2 million to 1.5 million species of insects that have been described, and of these 400,000 are beetles. At Durin’s scale of detail their weird bodies display variety in structures and colours, but their significance is lost here, away from their natural environments. What diversity in form and creativity.

There is also diversity in the sex lives of insects, recently outlined in Sex on Six Legs by M Zuk. She gives plenty of examples that challenge the rules of internet decency, let alone the human’s search for creative perversity. She tells of how, in one species of cricket, a male first serenades his mate with a song. She climbs on his back and is offered a chitinous bag of sperm that is emptied into her reproductive opening through a long spout.

Meanwhile, apparently, male water skaters of the species Gerris remigis hastily leap onto a passing female, and cling to her back with specially shaped hooks.